People that become successful with their home business literally become their own boss and they make money in their sleep. This is great but there is one problem. The problem is that many people do not know how to go about finding their top home based business and becoming successful with it.In order to find a top home based business you need to know what you like. For instance if you like cats you could create a website about cats, build your audience by providing updated content, and monetize that traffic with your mailing list or thorough resources like Google AdSense or Chikita. If you have a product to sell you could always promote that product with various online marketing techniques and get massive people to buy that product. Also, you do not need to have a product or service of your own, for the easiest way to start a top home based business is though affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is when you join a program that provides training, products, or services to people. Through this affiliate program you can get people to a pay for a product or service from that affiliate program and you will receive commissions.Another tip to finding your top home based business is by avoiding affiliate programs that you may feel uneasy about. That affiliate program may give all these promises on how they are the best and how you will make money instantly or get paid only by signing others up. If you encounter a website like this then chances are your gut feeling is right. It is best to do research on that website, search for reviews about it, and search for it on FTC’s website for this can save you time, money, and a fat pain in the neck.An advantage to searching for a top home based business is to find one that relates to something you have a passion for, either it’s through selling your own products from your website or promoting someone else you need to have a drive for what you are doing. Many people are just driven on making money and when they get no results within 6 months or so they give up. But if they had passion they would have found ways to promote their products or services as something of value to people rather just another advertised product or service.To find your top home based business you need to find a profitable niche. For instance you might like to design necklaces and you want to sell them on your website. Well you need to reach your target audience. You can attract your target audience through commonly searched keywords or funneling traffic through form sites related to necklaces.

As we approach a new year there are several trends that continue to be important for every successful home based business owner. Here are three that you should be following if you want to make more money with your own business next year.1. Use the Internet. It really does not matter what business model you are using. The Internet is where people are shopping more than ever before and you need an online presence to get your share of the market.Whether you own a franchise, a direct sales company, a network marketing business, or something else, using the Internet is smart for your business.2. Promote affiliate products. Any home business owner can increase their profit if they add affiliate products to their business.You may have a specific business opportunity that you promote, but if you’re smart you would have your own website and monetize it with affiliate products. Even adding Google AdSense to your website is a good way to make more money.3. Outsource for time management. Nobody can do it all and there are many opportunities to outsource things for your business.Examples of things you can outsource include web design, blog building, blog writing, article marketing, hiring a virtual assistant, and so on. If you are smart you will concentrate on things that you enjoy within your own business and then outsource those that you do not enjoy.These are 3 can’t miss trends in the marketplace today. Having a successful home based business means using the Internet, promoting affiliate products, and outsourcing tasks whenever possible.

If you are ready to start your own home-based business but still not sure which opportunity to go for, let me tell you right now that the best way to achieve real success with a home-based business is to start a real business, not jump into the next big opportunity that you see online. A real business will yield the best income returns and it will also last the test of time, helping you to build a sustainable source of income that will last for years and years to come.With this said, one of the most lucrative home-based businesses you can start is that of selling information products. Information products can be ebooks, audio courses, video courses, or anything that helps you teach your customer something that they are eagerly looking to learn. If you have any sort of expertise, even something you may think is not a marketable skill, you can probably make money by packaging your knowledge into various forms of digital products.If you really do want to make money from home, you have to build a real business based on your own products, and here are four fantastic reasons why starting an information product business will help you build financial freedom and even help you achieve a six-figure income within a year if you are willing to work hard and follow some simple directions from someone who has been there and done that:Reason #1 – Ease of product creationIt is so incredibly easy to package some of your knowledge into a short ebook, into an audio and video product, and into information courses that command several hundreds of dollars on autopilot. Imagine writing an eBook that was worth $37, an audio product that was worth $97, a video course that commanded $497, and a 1-on-1 consulting course that sold for $4997; sounds pretty good doesn’t it? Well guess what, there a several hundreds of successful online entrepreneurs who are quietly doing just this, pulling in insane amounts of money based solely on their information products that were created once, packaged nicely, and sold on autopilot for years and years following the initial work.Reason #2 – Ease of running your business after creating the productsWhen you decide to build a business based on your own information products, you basically have to build the products one time, set up a sales page for them, and they will do the rest of the work for you 24/7, year-round, whether you are there or not. This is truly the way to leverage your time and earn substantially more money than you would if you were paid by the hour.Reason #3 – Your return on investment is hugeHere’s the thing, when you create an information product, it takes up no space in your home, so there is no cost of storing products, there is no need to spend money on shipping because everything is sent digitally over the internet. So once you build and sell the product, whatever the cost is on the sales page is the cost you will see in your bank account, because there are no costs whatsoever in selling and then shipping your product. The only costs of running an information product business are the ones paid to your web hosting and your autoresponder, which are still very small in comparison to your profits.Reason #4 – The cost of running a home-based information product business is a fraction of what you can earnIn a year, no matter how much you earn, your costs to run the business are the same, which are only a couple hundred dollars. Compare this to the cost of running an offline brick-and-mortar business where the costs of rent would be thousands per month alone, so you can see how much you save by running a home-based business. You will likely keep almost 99% of everything you make since the costs of running your home-based business will be so incredibly low.

The decision of allowing a third party to manage your property is not always a simple decision to make. It can be quite difficult if you are a first time investor. However there are certain benefits that come with hiring the services of a property management company. Managing your property personally can make your entire life very miserable. But hiring someone to do it for you leaves you with a lot of free time and you can use the free time to close more deals. Before hiring any property company, you should ask yourself a few things and they include the following;

Cost of the services. The cost charged will vary from one state to another. Some of the management Fort Worth companies will charge as low as 4% of the gross rent while others will charge as much as 12 %. Hence you should understand the cost before hiring a property management company. If the cost is not ideal for you and your property, then drop that company and look for another.

Properties by the company. You should ensure that the company manages rental apartments that are like jut the ones you have. You can do a thorough research on the type of properties they have managed and this will help you know the credibility of the company. If you are not sure of the management company, Google it and check out their profile. After all if you are to entrust someone with your property, then you might want to know more about that person or that company.

Method of fee collection. You should know when the fees are to be collected. This will allow you to prepare on time. You should also ask the property management Fort Worth managers whether the fees will be deducted directly from your bank account or not. Some of the companies collect their fees quarterly while others collect annually. Hence you should be aware of the fee collection methods.

Advertising methods. Advertising methods used by the property managers should be effective. Therefore you should go for the property management company that has effective advertising methods. This will make your property to attract the best buyers.

General efficiency. The property management should be efficient in all ways. When a client vacates the premises, it should take a very short time for the apartment to be cleaned and rented out again.

Hiring the services of a management Fort Worth company will help you increase your overall profits. This can be as a result of reduced cost of managing the property. When you hire the services of the property management Fort Worth companies, you will have a lot of free time and you can use this free time to close more deals that will get you more property. You can even relocate to another country and let the property management experts run all the errands for you. If you are incurring a lot of costs while managing your property, then you might want to consider hiring the services of a property management.

Investing Wisdom from Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital

My regular listeners probably heard one of my earlier segments where I spoke about Howard Marks, the 67-year old billionaire who co-founded investment management firm Oaktree Capital which now manages about $84 billion in assets and is a publicly-traded company with ticker symbol OAK.

Oaktree focuses its investments on high-yield bonds, distressed debt and private equity, and has delivered a whopping 23% average annual return over the past 25 years… so Marks has rightly earned his fame and fortune. To give you an idea of just how much a 23% rate of return is: If you invested $10,000 25 years ago, it would be worth $1,769,000 today.

And, like Buffett, Marks too sends out folksy memos to Oaktree clients where he outlines his views on investing, the markets and the economy that are insightful, direct and sharply written. And today, I’m going to share a few insights from Marks’ latest memo – morphing his thoughts so they apply to individual financial planning. I’ve decided to break this up into a two-part series – with the first half of Marks’ memo today, and the rest to follow next week.

Key Questions to Ask First

So in this latest memo, Marks first addresses philosophical questions on what to consider in setting up your investment portfolio. Once you have a clear idea on what your investment goals are, based on your retirement needs, Marks says you should discuss the following questions with your advisor:

- Is it possible to build a retirement portfolio that can beat the market? If yes, then how, and to what extent can we beat the market?

- What’s the best way to manage risk?

- How do we define success, and what risks are we willing to take to achieve investment success?

Then, as you build your portfolio, you’d want to balance it out between index investments (where you should not expect market-beating returns), individual stocks such as dividend payers, and perhaps some alternative investments to a smaller extent. If you’re closer to retirement, you might also want the safety of inflation-protected bonds. And for the safety of bonds, index investments and dividend stocks, you should be willing to accept “average” performance. But for the alternative investment portion of your portfolio, you should expect above-average or superior returns, as Marks calls it.

Pick Funds that Dare to be Different

For your alternative investments where you’re seeking superior returns, look for funds that are backed by a strong track record, and where fund managers dare to be different. You see, if you pick a mutual fund that’s run by a manager who is essentially following or mimicking what others are doing, you’ll just end up paying high fees without getting any real bang for your buck.

So for this alternative portion of your portfolio, look for managers that are courageous enough to be different and open to being wrong… managers who assemble a portfolio that is different from those held by most other funds. As Marks puts it, to be a top performer, the fund manager has to “escape the crowd” by being active in unusual market niches, buying things others haven’t found, don’t like or consider too risky to touch. A good alternative fund manager avoids what the market considers to be a darling, or all the rage, and engages in contrarian cycle timing, and concentrates heavily in a small number of things that he thinks will deliver exceptional performance… everything that personifies great investors such as Howard Marks and Warren Buffett.

As Marks puts it “the cautious seldom err or write great poetry” in referring to fund managers that follow the herd.

So look for fund managers who dare to be different, have a consistent history of market-beating performance and are transparent with their investors. That said, you also need to recalibrate your expectations with such alternative funds because their investments often could take longer to bear fruit… so only invest a small portion of your funds that you’re not planning on touching till you reach retirement… because if you picked the right alternative investment fund, those superior returns could compound very nicely over time.

Now I know that it’s near impossible for most individual investors to really evaluate alternative investment funds, so this is where a good, qualified advisor can offer advice and help kick some of your returns into high gear.

And as I mentioned above, Marks’ company – Oaktree Capital – is publicly traded with ticker symbol OAK, so you can buy shares to participate in Oaktree’s success; When you invest shares in OAK, you are not buying into Marks’ portfolio, but rather participating the company’s profit from its portion of the investment it takes for itself and the fees that are generated from his clients. Oaktree shares also offer a pretty compelling 7.7% dividend yield at current levels… but this is not a recommendation so please do your own research should you consider buying Oaktree.

Most great investments begin in discomfort.

Most people feel good about making investments where the underlying premise is widely accepted, where recent performance has been positive and where the outlook is rosy – but such investments are high in demand and are unlikely to be available at bargain prices.

Bargains are usually found among things that are controversial, that people are pessimistic about, and that have been performing badly of late – investments that generate discomfort for most people. And this is where good alternative funds excel. For example, Oaktree Capital focuses on distressed debt – bonds issued by companies that are on the ropes in some way or another, bonds that are priced at pennies-to-the-dollar… bonds that comfort-seeking investors would not even think about. This discomfort is what causes distressed debt to be priced cheaper than it is really worth, and it’s one sector that has helped fuel Oaktree’s outsize returns. This area of investing is practically impossible for the typical investor to get into and one has to have superior skills in order to avoid being burned badly if things don’t work out.

Marks also says; Dare to Be Wrong

Marks also reminds us that with courageous, discomfort-generating investments, you must also be prepared for failure as an inescapable potential consequence of trying to do really well. In other words, be prepared to lose money on this alternative portion of your portfolio… it’s not something anyone wants, but get into alternative investments with the understanding that non-mainstream investments could be harder to liquidate and have greater risk, and while your fingers are crossed for the upside, be aware that you could also lose money. That said, a good alternative investment fund should protect you significantly on the downside too.

So look for alternative funds that invest judiciously, have more successes than failures, and make more on their successes than lose on their failures.

Alas… No Magic Formula

Marks also cautions us that there is no easy formula to produce superior risk-adjusted returns – because if there were, everyone with a positive IQ would be rich.

Or, as good ol’ Charlie Munger, Warren Buffet’s Partner bluntly puts it, “Investing is not supposed to be easy. Anyone who finds it easy is stupid” and does not understand investing’s complex and competitive nature. Hardly the words of someone who wants to be politically correct, but he makes a good point. Why should successful investing be so easy that the uneducated and lazy investor achieves superior rate of return? It just doesn’t happen that way.

Superior investment results can only come from a better-than-average ability to figure out when risk-taking will lead to gain and when it will end in loss. And this is not easy task. So it’s good to look for fund managers that ideally have a strong background in economics, financial math, accounting and investment analysis.